The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1)
Read The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) Online
Authors: Iza Moreau
The News in Small Towns
(Book One in the Small Town Series)
By Iza Moreau
Copyright
©
2012 Iza Moreau
Cover design by Black Bay Books
Published by Black Bay Books
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer.
There is no note on any instrument that has not been played before. That said,
The News in Small Towns
is sheer fiction. Any resemblance of names, places, characters, and incidents to actual persons, places, and events results from the relationship which the world must always bear to works of this kind.
Books by Iza Moreau
The News in Small Towns
(2012)
Madness in Small Towns
(2013)
Secrets in Small Towns
(2014)
Mysteries in Small Towns
(2015)
Table of Contents
When your horse shies at an object and is unwilling to go up to it, he should be shown that there is nothing fearful in it, least of all to a courageous horse like him.
—Xenophon
I see it. It’s not dangerous. Go forward.
—Cindy McKeown
Prologue
On my last day in Baghdad, I woke up in a bed with a sagging mattress, rumpled sheets, and a naked Crow Indian from Montana by the name of Lieutenant Ossie Enemy Hunter. He was sleeping off a booze and sex binge—one of the first he’d been able to have since being deployed to Iraq several months earlier. I was hung over from the same binge, but it was not nearly my first. Lt. Enemy Hunter was in his late twenties, bronze and very tall. Although I was a half dozen years older, I had never met a Native American before, much less slept with one, and I had fallen in love with his stature more than anything else. Of course the term “fallen in love” is a euphemism, but the night had been more pleasant than most.
I had been in Baghdad for almost six months, living in a compound of journalists in the eighteen-story Palestine Hotel, once one of the most popular and expensive places to stay in Iraq. When I arrived it was still expensive, but mortar shells and rifle fire had damaged the façade and blown out many of the windows. The lobby had lost any elegance it may once have had—the carpets were stained, the ceiling had been torn apart for wiring repairs and never replaced, the furniture was ramshackle, and the service was nonexistent. Plumbing was iffy, and electrical blackouts were common. The room was hot and humid even in the early morning, and the open window admitted only the shadow of a breeze.
Outside, I heard the thumping fan blades of a rescue helicopter, carrying wounded to the Baghdad Hospital. I sat up in bed and looked at the clock on the nightstand. Six a.m.: just before sunup. Everywhere in the city, Muslims would be on their knees facing Mecca before going about their daily duties. My own duties would begin later, meeting with others in my bureau and getting brought up to speed on car bombings or firefights or fatwas from the imams. I would read copy and study photos done the day before, then make assignments. Maybe I could work up a story to send home, maybe not. Maybe I’d just visit the few shops in the compound, drop in on other bureaus, add something to my diary, sleep. The truth is, I had arrived on the ass end of the Baghdad story. At one time journalists could freely wander around the entire city without escort; now it was too dangerous. An American—especially an American woman—walking along Baghdad streets alone would have a less than even chance of arriving back safely. And to go out with an escort was putting the escort in danger as well as yourself. Better to stay inside and go crazy. Better to let wannabe Iraqi reporters get whatever news there was that was fit to print. Many of the news organizations had packed up and gone home. I knew I would be leaving soon, too. Not soon enough, though. The months of fighting in the streets, the distrust, the religious decrees that marginalized women, the infighting between members of the coalition government, the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars to opportunist private companies with their hands crammed all the way to the elbow up the asses of the Bush administration—all of it—had put me into a deep depression that made booze, sex, loud music, greasy food, and frantic bouts of typing on my computer necessities of life.
The Enemy Hunter stirred in bed and opened his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. Oh, yeah, his voice. I loved that voice, too—deep and hollow like it was coming up from a brick well.
“All American women in Iraq are beautiful,” I told him. I gathered my shoulder-length hair in both hands and twisted it behind my head.
“Sue,” he said. “Susan.”
“Sue-Ann,” I told him. “Sue-Ann McKeown. Listen, I meant to ask you; do you shoot archery?”
“Bows and arrows?”
“Yeah.”
“Not since I was a papoose. Why ask something like that?”
“I’m not trying to stereotype you,” I said. “It’s just that I do. I thought we might have something in common. Something we could talk about.”
“You do what? Shoot bows and arrows?” He ran a hand through his jet black crew cut.
“Yeah. I was, um, on the Olympic team once. I’ve studied Native American archery tackle; I tried to make one once but I couldn’t get the rawhide the right consistency. Did you know that some Indian bows were so powerful that they could send an arrow completely through a running buffalo?”
The Enemy Hunter shifted toward me on the bed and sat up so that we were face to face. “You’re interested in my culture?” he asked.
“Well, sorta, at least the archery aspect of it. Ironic I guess, being as we’re surrounded by Ghurkas with AK-47s.”
He stroked my bare leg. “I wish I did know,” he said. “Because I would like to talk to you about those things. But not many Crow use the bow and arrow any more. What about horses?”
“Horses?” I asked. “My mother has horses. I ride them sometimes when I’m home.”
“I can talk to you about horses,” he said, showing his long, perfectly white teeth. “I can take you to see horses.”
“What, you’re going to take me to Montana?” I smiled.
“No, there are horses here in Baghdad. I can take you there.”
“Are you talking about old work horses?” I asked. The only horses I had seen in Iraq were to be pitied as much as the people; pulling crickety carts filled to overflowing with loot or debris. Those that died were pulled to the side of the road.
The Enemy Hunter had seen them, too, and answered quickly. “No no. Pureblood Arabian horses. At the Zoo. Very beautiful.”
“Horses at the zoo?”
“That’s where they are now. For their safety.”
“When do you want to go?” I asked.
He reached out and pulled me gently down on the bed. The sparse stubble of his beard was raspy against my cheek, but I didn’t mind. There was a lot that I had learned not to mind. “Maybe in an hour?” he smiled, and turned his attention to my nipples.
“Wait,” I began, squirming, “I saw something in a brochure somewhere. It said that the prophet Muhammad was a master of archery and horsemanship. How’s that for a coincidence?”
“Shhh,” he said, and moved on top of me. I shhh’d.
After a cold shower and breakfast downstairs in the restaurant, Ossie (short for Oscar, I found out) and I walked out of our safe compound and across the Joumhouriyah Bridge toward the Green Zone. We ran into a couple of his unit on the way, and they escorted us up to the gates. The Enemy Hunter wore a holstered pistol on his belt. In his boots and fatigues, he was almost a foot taller than me. I felt pretty safe, really.
The Green Zone, which some people referred to as The Bubble, was a four-square-mile bulwark of safety against anyone who might want to harm the people inside with rifles, mortar shells, or suicide bombs. It was here, inside seventeen-foot-high concrete barricades, that were housed most foreign nationals—not only diplomats and “advisors,” but employees of companies like Halliburton, who were in charge of staffing and maintaining the hotels, or Blackwater USA, who provided private security guards to whoever had enough moolah to afford them.
I had known that the Baghdad Zoo was located in the Green Zone, but it had never occurred to me to go there. On the many previous occasions when I had gone into The Bubble, I was always strapped for time scheduling interviews, getting press briefings, and trying to get back to my hotel before dark. Too, I was put off by stories I had heard about the zoo: cages being opened during the invasion and animals stolen by looters. Birds and goats—even one of the giraffes— had been eaten by the looters or sold on the international black market. Other animals had starved for days in their cages because zoo workers were afraid to come to work. Maybe I’m not a zoo person. I hadn’t known I needed a horse fix, but the opportunity to see the Arabians Ossie had mentioned was perking me up as nothing had in months.
After we had shown our credentials at several checkpoints, we walked through streets relatively empty at this time of morning. Rows of date palms and other lushness actually thrived in the Green Zone, but pedestrians often missed the greenery because they had to keep their eyes on the ground in order to avoid falling over rubble or stepping into a deep rut made by an army tank. Nevertheless, we hadn’t gone three blocks before two western women jogged past us wearing shorts and t-shirts. One was wearing earphones. It was a different world inside the Green Zone. Anywhere else in Iraq, women not wearing veils and voluminous, ankle-length skirts could be harassed by clerics and kidnapped by criminals. In fact, the repressive gender dynamics in Iraq had gotten worse since the invasion: some Iraqi women I had interviewed told me that, fearful of being attacked on the street, they stayed in their houses with the curtains closed.
“Did you know that Baghdad has a track?” the Enemy Hunter said in his rich, bricky voice. “What, you mean like to run around?” I asked.
“A horse racing track. The Equestrian Club of Baghdad at the edge of the city. I went there with some of my unit. It’s very popular—more now than before the Operation.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because Saddam’s two sons owned a lot of thoroughbreds and liked to race them. They always won.”
“The other owners were afraid to beat them?” I asked.
“Uday and Qusay didn’t like to lose, no, but they could afford to buy all the best horses—except for the Iraqi National Herd.”
“What happened to Uday and Qusay’s horses?”
“Stolen by looters, same as everything else in Baghdad. But fine horses are sacred in Iraq. A lot of them were recovered.”
“And taken to the zoo?” I asked.
“No, no. To the Equestrian Club stables.”
“But you said—”
“It’s the National Herd that’s at the zoo,” he said.
“So, what’s the National Herd?”
“It’s easier to show you. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
We were passing the British compound, where we saw a sign posted on a lightpole that said, “You’re not paranoid: Everyone IS
out to get you.” Music wafted out of one of the Halliburton trailers from Freedom Radio—a station that specialized in classic rock and patriotic patter. I waved to a British journalist I knew, then turned back to Ossie.
“Why your interest in horses?” I asked. “Is it a cultural thing?”
“Partly,” he said. “Mostly. That’s why I joined the 1
st
Cavalry Division.” He pointed to the insignia on his lapel—a yellow shield with the black profile of a horse’s head. “Back at Ft. Hood, I was a part of the Horse Cavalry Detachment—we take care of the Army’s horses and mules—mostly ceremonial stuff. When we found out about the National Herd, some of us volunteered to come over and rebuild their barn.”
“You
volunteered
to come to Iraq?” I asked incredulously.
Ossie shrugged. “You did, too,” he replied. He stopped in front of the thick iron gates of the
2,500-acre al-Zawra entertainment park and looked through the bars.
“This is it,” he said.
Inside, we strolled for a few minutes through rows of cages in various states of repair. If I remember correctly there was a porcupine, some german shepherds, a lion cub, and a few camels. We stood there for a few seconds, admiring the camels, wondering if they would be fun to ride. Eventually, though, we passed out of the purviews of the zoo proper and came to an area with twenty newly constructed stalls of timber and iron. The area was cleaner than the rest of the zoo and I could see horses resting in stalls. Ossie greeted a soldier pushing a wheelbarrow filled with manure. The front of his sweaty t-shirt read “1st Cavalry” in brown letters.
“So, um, you work here?” I asked.
“When I’m not drilling or going on supply runs.” He walked up to the first stall and stroked the mane of the small, fine-boned white mare within. We made a tour of the stalls, and Ossie gave each horse a squarish alfalfa cube from a storage room. He called each one by its name and explained to me what the names meant. They were truly magnificent, proud creatures. He showed me the acres of pasture that they had for turnout and the large supplies of hay and feed, all of it donated by Western equine charity organizations. We sat down on a stack of lumber and Ossie told me a little about himself—that he has a wife in Billings, for instance. She is from another tribe, the Gros Ventre. He has two young boys and had been a high school history teacher before he enlisted. Maybe he would try to get his master’s when he got back, try to get a job at the college in Crow Agency. He could teach Native American History, maybe throw in some information on the bow and arrow. He smiled as he said this.
“So tell me the history of the Iraqi National Herd,” I said.
Ossie tilted his head back slightly, then began. “Their line goes back to the ancient Sumerians—the oldest civilization on earth. It was located right here at the Tigris and Euphrates conjunction.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “I walk out on my balcony and look into the Tigris and wonder how many millions of stories have passed down its currents. I mean, Iraq is exotic enough now, but imagine how it must have been when it was part of the Ottoman Empire!”
“And it was Babylon, too,” he told me.
“Tell me about the Sumerians,” I said.